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FreeBSD 5.3-BETA5 Available
Nirbo writes "FreeBSD 5.3-BETA5 is now available! Get it while it's hot! Here is the mailing list post. Remember folks, this is currently the last beta that will be released for 5.3, we're only a week from a Release Candidate, and two weeks from a release!"
The link in the write-up is bad; here's one that works.
"Remember folks, this is currently the last beta that will be released for 5.3" Not quite accurate "We will add at least one more beta (BETA6)to accomodate testing."
ULE has been set aside for 5.3-RELEASE. It is back to SCHED_4BSD for now.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Sorry I can't answer your question on ULE, but thought I might point out that they now recommend against turning on PREEMPTION.
What are the main differences between the latest FreeBSD kernels and the linux ones.
It's not just the kernel that is FreeBSD's benefit, but the fact that the whole system is so well integrated. Even if you could, merely switching out one kernel for the better one would not provide you much benefit.
I haven't done any kernel work, and my kernel knowledge is limited to a Linux driver class and the new McKusick book. So take my comments with a grain of salt. But it seems to me that Linux tends to be very haphazard. There doesn't seem to be much evolution towards better subsystems, but instead replacement with alternative subsystems. For example witness the recent VM wars. There's also a distinct NIH (not invented here) attitude in Linux.
The FreeBSD kernel seems to be of a more "tried and true" design, with boring and unexciting implementations. The kernel improves by slow evolution. If NetBSD , OpenBSD or DragonflyBSD have done something right, FreeBSD is not shy about adopting it.
Pick up McKusick's "Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" for more information(it's the successor to the venerable 44BSD book).
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The vaulted FreeBSD stability is mostly a matter of conservativism rather than the long history of the OS. Certainly much of FreeBSD was slowly evolved--and I think that applies to the 4.x series, but 5.x contains many aggressive changes to the Kernel. Thus, the history argument does not hold so much water.
Really, though, there are two kinds of stability. The uptime kind (really not that amazing in a UNIX OS, period.) and the system kind. FreeBSD is loved by administrators for its very well enforced POLA (policy of least astonishment). Point releases of the OS almost never break existing setups. E.g., 5.x will use use Bind9 and GCC 3.4 for it's entire existence. Should the originators of those programs neglect them, the FreeBSD project will step in and merge in fixes themselves. That sort of consistency is valued by many in critical applications.
A FreeBSD Kernel is not much different from modern Linux Kernels.
One of the big differences between the BSDs and Linux Distributions, though, is that the different BSD projects tend be distinguished by disagreements over system architecture--major design decisions at the Kernel level. Moreover, BSD projects tend to be focused on providing a complete, integrated system. Userland development and Kernel development always go hand-in-hand.
You pretty much said what I meant to say. If you have a cool new idea for implementing a subsystem what do you do? You're only choices in seeing it implemented are forking the project or starting a smear campaign against the old subsystem. DragonflyBSD did the former, and the myriad political battles in Linux attest to the popularity of the latter.
Bwaahaha!! If you are trying to paint FreeBSD in a good light by bringing up DragonflyBSD, while also saying "Linux is too political", you were either born yesterday or else you've got a few sheep loose in the top paddock.
Newsflash for you. Matt Dillon's "leaving" FreeBSD was one of the most controversial and political events in FreeBSD history (basically Matt, one of their brightest and most productive contributors, was worried their system would end up like it has, due to the short-sightedness of the SMP work. He was kicked out for "causing trouble").
Also, you'll soon see that if you visit lkml, smear campaigns will get you nowhere. Changes are made on the basis of technical merit.
Troll.
"A lot of people say FreeBSD is better because "its more stable" or "it has a more mature kernel" I've seen little evidence to substantiate these common claims."
uptimes
You'll see a Solaris there. Occasionally. I don't think I've ever seen a Linux. It's exclusively BSD/OS and FreeBSD most of the time.
"Apart from the cool things like the ports system and userland differences, licensing differences aside- At the core level of the kernel what makes a new FreeBSD kernel better than a new linux kernel?"
Focusing on the kernel differences misses the point. The only stuff you'll notice is that Linux supports more filesystems, and FreeBSD has PF imported from OpenBSD.
The key advantage of FreeBSD is a very well tested base system. The ports give you a convenient way to add to the base system, and they tend to be quite well tested as well, but I've not seen the same level of quality on any Linux, least of all Gentoo (which basically doesn't do any regression testing and therefore breaks a lot).
Oh yeah. And the documentation. Linux docs are pretty bad. BSD man pages are famous for quality.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
VS BETA3
Beta3 had problems with doing a make update and 5.2.1 on a multi-processor Xeon box was 'rebooting'. 5.0 and Windblows NT 4 on the same hardware lacked the reboot feature.
JDK1.4 even built under BETA5.
All the little fork'n processes look good.